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WALKOUT OF YOUR SCHOOL, COLLEGE OR UNIVERSITY NEXT WEDNESDAY, 24 NOVEMBER

Walkouts took place at hundreds of schools and colleges against the Iraq war in 2003, against ‘third world’ debt in 2005, and several colleges walked out against cuts in 2009-10.

Organisers suggest: ‘Download national leaflet at anticuts.com, writing on the details of your local meet-up point, photocopy and hand it out. Use email, Facebook, texts, phone calls to advertise the time and place of your protest’

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“This excellent handbook on the Washington-based international financial institutions and the debt mechanism by means of which the Global South is subjugated is not only an indispensable tool for pro-poor anti-debt activists, but also a very useful synthesis that can and should be used in classrooms.” —Gilbert Achcar, Professor of Development Studies School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

“Éric Toussaint is one of the brightest and most influential economists of his generation. He is the founder of the CADTM, and has gained a worldwide reputation for his exemplary struggle against the ‘odious debt’ strangling countless countries in the South.” —Jean Ziegler, former UN Special Rapporteur

Mainstream economists tell us that developing countries will replicate the economic achievements of the rich countries if they implement the correct “free-market” policies. But scholars and activists Toussaint and Millet demonstrate that this is patently false. Drawing on a wealth of detailed evidence, they explain how developed economies have systematically and deliberately exploited the less-developed economies by forcing them into unequal trade and political relationships. Integral to this arrangement are the international economic institutions ostensibly created to safeguard the stability of the global economy—the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank —and the imposition of massive foreign debt on poor countries. The authors explain in simple language, and ample use of graphics, the multiple contours of this exploitative system, its history, and how it continues to function in the present day.

Ultimately, Toussaint and Millet advocate cancellation of all foreign debt for developing countries and provide arguments from a number of perspectives—legal, economic, moral. Presented in an accessible and easily-referenced question and answer format, Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank is an essential tool for the global justice movement.

Éric Toussaint, a doctor in political science, is president of the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt, CADTM Belgium. He is author of A Diagnosis of Emerging Global Crisis and Alternatives, and The World Bank: A Critical Primer, among other books.

Damien Millet teaches mathematics and is spokesperson for CADTM France. He is the author of L’Afrique sans dette, and co-author with Éric Toussaint of Tsunami Aid or Debt Cancellation.

Since the mid-1980s, David F. Ruccio has been developing a new framework of Marxian class analysis and applying it to various issues in socialist planning, Third World development, and capitalist globalization. The aim of this collection is to show, through a series of concrete examples, how Marxian class analysis can be used to challenge existing modes of thought and to produce new insights about the problems of capitalist development and the possibilities of imagining and creating non-capitalist economies.

The book consists of fifteen essays, plus an introductory chapter situating the author’s work in a larger intellectual and political context. The topics covered range from planning theory to the role of the state in the Nicaraguan Revolution, from radical theories of underdevelopment to the Third World debt crisis, and from a critical engagement with regulation theory to contemporary discussions of globalization and imperialism.

Foreword Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff

Introduction

1. Rethinking Planning, Globalization, and Development from a Marxian Perspective Planning

David F. Ruccio is Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame, USA and past editor of the journal Rethinking Marxism.

Observations and Comments on Development and Globalization: A Marxian Analysis

Development, and Globalization is anti-essentialist social theory at its very best. Whether re-reading socialist planning debates, economic and social development struggles in the global South, or capitalist and alter-capitalist theories of globalization, David Ruccio engages the contemporary conjuncture in fresh and exciting ways, demonstrating throughout the successes of the rethinking Marxism project and the immense potential and range of contemporary Marxian analysis. What Maurice Dobb did for twentieth-century critiques of socialist planning, capitalist development, and imperialist expansion, Ruccio redoubles for a new age of post-Communist and globalized political economy — John Pickles, Earl N. Phillips Distinguished Professor of International Studies and Chair of the Department of Geography, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and author of A History of Spaces: Cartographic Reason, Mapping, and the Geo-Coded World

David Ruccio is a central figure in the exciting and innovative “postmodern” school of Marxian thought. Through his own writing and his stewardship of the journal Rethinking Marxism he has contributed immensely to this tradition. In this collection, Ruccio draws together, sharpens, and extends central insights from that school of thought and applies them to debates over socialist planning, economic development, and globalization. The essays demonstrate the depth of Ruccio’s intellect and the range of his expertise, to be sure, while also conveying the power of the postmodern Marxian tradition in helping us to overcome the malaise that now affects much contemporary left scholarship about prospects for radical reform in the Global South. In Ruccio’s hands, Marxism emerges as a vibrant tradition that continues to generate new avenues of scholarship and practical politics in pursuit of a more just world. — George DeMartino, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver and author of Global Economy, Global Justice: Theoretical and Policy Alternatives to Neoliberalism

Whether one agrees or not with the basic premises and analysis of this book, it will provide an intellectual challenge to everyone. Focusing on issues related to planning, development and globalization, particularly in Latin America, Ruccio questions the prevailing wisdom in circles of both the Right and the Left. His privileging of class analysis provides the unifying thread to the wide variety of themes covered in the sixteen chapters. In our post-crisis search for new economic thinking and alternatives for social transformation, Ruccio’s book comes at a perfect time to contribute to the debates. — Lourdes Beneria, Cornell University and author of Gender, Development, and Globalization: Economics as if All People Mattered

Pathbreaking in its originality and breathtaking in its coverage, the truly outstanding volume David Ruccio has delivered is indispensable in critiquing a variety of prevailing developmental paradigms. Rather than simplistically noting the ‘failures’ of capitalism, this book reveals how neoliberal development policies can be considered successful in terms of promoting the emergence and strengthening of capitalist class processes and the appropriation of surplus-value in Latin America and beyond. It is obligatory reading for scholars and students seeking to construct Marxian class analyses and to formulate alternatives to the world economy today. — Adam David Morton, University of Nottingham and author of Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Political Economy